A blog set up by 40k enthusiasts, for 40k enthusiasts.
Concentrating on the competitive side of the hobby, but in no way limited to it.

Tuesday, 12 November 2013

Common Ground Tourni 10 November

Went to a fun tournament at Common Ground Gaming in Stirling at the Weekend.

Took a list that I thought would be “fun”, but it turned out to be just really bad!

Farsight

Commander, Twin Fusion, target lock, Stim Injectors. Warscraper Drone

Riptide, HBC, ECPA, Talisman, VT, EWO

3 - XV8s. One with twin Fusions and Target Lock, 2 with Twin Plasma, one with a positional relay and the other with Vectored Retro Thrusters

3 XV8s all with Twin Burst Cannons and Stim Injectors.

2 Skyrays

Allied Tau Commander with all the toys

2 packs of 10 Kroot, plus a hound.

The idea was that Farsight would Deep Strike within 6” of my opponents Board Edge with the Plasma suits, allowing the other team with the Warscraper Commander to outflank onto my opponents Board Edge. The “Bat Man” Commander would hang out with the Riptide and the Skyrays providing fire support with Marker Light support from the Skyrays.

At the end of the day I came 2nd (losing only to the eventual winner in a really tight game) and won best painted, but the list was a disaster!

Not once in all 4 games did I pull of “the trick”. I never managed to bring Farsight and the Warscraper Suits down on the same turn – either one stayed stubbornly in reserve, or I felt I needed the fire power on the ground from turn one, and started them on the board. When either suit unit came in, they did “OK” but Farsight’s unit died too easily to return fire, and while the other unit was more survivable (with FNP), because there wasn’t enough fire power in the rest of the army to support them, they still died too easily!

The thing that did work was the Riptide with Commander attached. With Tank Hunter and Monster Hunter from the PEN chip, the HBC threatens everything on the board ….. and so it should given how many points are wrapped up in the combo! Also, the Talisman of Arthas Moloch was fantastic against Demons. I played a “sort of” screamer council in my 4th game(he did have 6 screamers, but supported them with only one Herald in a Chariot, rather than a disk”), and I made a huge number of deny the witch rolls.

But that was about it really – there were just too many points “off the board” in reserve if I reserved both Suit teams, and they never came on at the same time to provide the “punch” I was looking for. If I started them on the board, there weapons were too short range to really do anything.

Maybe at higher points levels it might work, as there would be more fire support (maybe!), but not at 1500pts.

A brief run down of my games.

Game 1 was against a combined white scars and death wing army, kill points. We talked about this after the game, but he was a bit cautious and came at me unit by unit, allowing me to kill them one at a time. If he had rushed me with everything, he would have overwhelmed me, and I would have been toast. Really fun game. We laughed lot. Win for me.

Game 2 was the game I lost against the eventual winner. He was playing a Grey Knight list with Coteaz and Mordrak, a Dreadknight, Stormraven and a bunch of Henchmen. Long story short, I screwed up my deployment, and allowed him to Deep Strike Mordrak and the Ghost Knights into a ruin on my home objective (Crusader and the relic combined). I allowed my self to be intimidated by the Dreadknigh’s teleporter, into a silly deployment. If that wasn’t bad enough I then got fixated on killing the Ghost Knights and Mordrak, and forgot about the rest of the mission. Still – if it had gone on to a turn 6 I probably would have pulled out a win, but it ended turn 5. Good game.

Game 4 was against a space wolves list. Essentially a bunch of grey hunters and Long Fangs behind an Aegis, with a 3 man Thunder Wolf unit lead by a Lord. I screwed up my deployment (again!) and pushed my Kroot too far forward. The Thunder Wolves ate them first turn, but at least it drew them out and I murdered them in one round of shooting from the Riptide and the Skyrays (think my opponetns was a bit shocked by that, but the number of wounds I put on them it was’t that much of a surprise). After that it was just a matter of killing his gun line. This was the one game where the Farsight/Positional relay trick almost worked … but not really! Highlight of this game was killing my own Riptide through repeated failures to save “over heat” rolls … I took all 5 wounds off the damn thing myself! Also, (again) I get too fixated on killing stuff and didn’t go for the objectives as I should have. To be honest, this wasn’t a mistake – I knew I was doing it and did it deliberately … because where’s the fun in hiding! But it meant I only won 6VPs to 4, and I could have won by more. Of course it was only after that I realised they were using combined VPs over all 4 games to decide the overall winner, rather than points for wins etc … sigh!

In my last game I played demons. It was more of a “fun” demon list than anything particularly competitive – Fateweaver, 6 screamers, herald on a chariot, 2 squads of flamers, a bunch of Plague Bearers, a Soul Grinder and unit of 6 (I think) Blood letters (I think – the guys on Rhino’s). Long story short – he rushed me and I killed everything. Highlight was taking out all the screamers (even with their silly save – he didn’t role the Divination power that gives him the 4++), killing one of the Rhino’s in Overwatch, meaning that he didn’t get his charge off, blocking a ludicrous number of Psychic shooting attacks with the Talisman and eventually killing Fatweaver in close combat with Farsight, which was pretty epic.

Ended in a big win for me (12-0 I think) which meant I was on equal points with a buddy from the non-club in 2nd place, 3 points (I think) behind the winner ….. if only I had known about the VP scoring system before game 4…!

Never mind, a fun day with fun games against fun lists.

Little Geek had fun too – he game 6th with his mech elder.

So, in summary, I don’t think this list will see the light of day again …. It was just too frustrating to use.

Next weekend I’m off to Winter War in Dunfermline. I’m expecting this to be a little more competitive than last weekend’s tourni, but I’m still going to take a "fun" list (read "bad"!).